A new product, Iron, is a viable alternative for those reluctant to reveal their personal data when using Google's Chrome browser. The Iron browser is based on Chrome's source code.

The new Iron browser is under a BSD license and its producer, software company SRWare, has removed all Chrome functionality compromising data security. SRWare offers a free download from their website.

Unlike Chrome, Iron does not create unique user IDs, nor does it send URIs to Google for generating search hints. Installation of the software will also be transparent to Google. SRWare's browser clone should be just as fast as Chrome and uses version 525.19 of Apple's WebKit Engine.

Adoption of the browser by Linux users is still to be seen. Although Iron runs native on Windows and Mac systems, it requires Wine on Linux. During a test on Wine 1.1.5 with Kubuntu 8.04, the browser took up plenty of CPU resource, but failed to start.

Google touts its Javascript engine version 8, among other things, as setting new speed records for its Chrome browser. Linux Magazine found during a benchmark test that the next Firefox generation can keep up with it.

At the CanSecWest Vancouver 2009 conference's PWN2OWN hacker's competition the Safari, Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox browsers were successfully hacked to run code on their systems. The Chrome browser was recognized as being the least impacted by the hackers.

Comments

Iron on Mac?

Dominic

"iron runs native on Windows and Mac systems" - does it really? i can't find a mac version out there (SRWare doesn't seem to offer a download for mac, just XP & Vista), but i'd love to install it on my mac.